China-U.S. Nuclear Probe Blocked By Politics-Trulock

Updated 3:03 AM ET August 30, 1999, By Mary Gabriel
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990830/03/news-china-spying

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The man who headed the initial probe into China's alleged theft of U.S. nuclear secrets said Sunday he was blocked from briefing Congress by a Clinton administration appointee out of partisan political concerns.

"One of the senior officials told me directly that the reason that she did not allow me to brief the (Capitol) Hill on this case was that congressional Republicans...were only interested in hurting the president on his China policy," former Energy Department investigator Notra Trulock told Fox News Sunday.

Trulock said he understood from Deputy Secretary of Energy Elizabeth Moler, who has since resigned, that she wanted to keep him from talking with Florida Republican Rep. Porter Goss, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Moler could not be reached immediately for comment.

Trulock's comments came six days after he abruptly quit the Energy Department, charging he had been blocked from briefing Congress or then-Energy Secretary Federico Pena about his investigation into allegations China stole U.S. nuclear secrets from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and other facilities.

Los Alamos is at the center of what a U.S. congressional report said was a 20-year effort by China to steal information on U.S. nuclear warheads and the neutron bomb. China has denied the espionage allegations.

Trulock said the "last straw" was an Energy Department Inspector General's report that found no conclusive evidence to support this charge that higher-ups sought to block his investigation.

"For the inspector general to trivialize such serious and important issues and do what essentially became a he said/she said...I think it's time to leave at that point," he said.

In recent weeks, Trulock has come under heavy criticism for singling out Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwan-born nuclear physicist at Los Alamos, as the government's prime espionage suspect.

The Washington Post reported that three officials who participated in various stages of the investigation have said they believe Trulock and FBI agents focused on Lee largely because of his ethnicity.

Lee, a U.S. citizen, has not been charged with any crime and has denied passing secrets to China. But Energy Secretary Bill Richardson fired Lee from his job in Los Alamos's top-secret X Division for breaching security procedures by transferring classified files to an unclassified computer in his office.

Newsweek reported Sunday that U.S. Justice Department security chief John Dion has urged his superiors not to proceed with prosecution of Lee because evidence against him is not strong enough.

Trulock, who denied targeting Lee because of his race, said he does not know if there is enough evidence to convict Lee of spying charges. But he said it is clear China obtained information on U.S. nuclear weapons through espionage and that theft poses a danger.

"In point of fact, they have already announced and used their acquisition of the neutron warhead as a warning and a deterrent in the ongoing Taiwan issue," Trulock said.

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Whistleblower or Demagogue?

Trulock's Critics Say He Hyped Flimsy Chinese Spying Case
By Vernon Loeb and Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, August 29, 1999; Page A06

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-08/29/208l-082999-idx.html

After years in the shadows as an intelligence analyst and federal bureaucrat, Notra Trulock III pulled his chair up to the witness table in the Senate Armed Services Committee's vast hearing room and readied himself for a new role: whistleblower.

It was April, and the press had been full of his exploits for weeks as leaked reports of Chinese nuclear spying at Los Alamos National Laboratory dominated political debate in Washington. Leading Republicans in Congress were accusing the Clinton administration of dragging its feet.

And Trulock, in his first public testimony, backed up the charge.

Staring at the senators arrayed before him on the dais, Trulock said, without batting an eye, that his superiors in the Department of Energy "urged me to cover up and bury this case."

Soon, he was the talk of the town, telling the same shocking tale on NBC's "Meet the Press" one Sunday morning in May, when he compared the possible loss of secrets at Los Alamos to "the Rosenberg-Fuchs compromise of the Manhattan Project information" at the end of World War II.

But all that seemed like ancient history last week when Trulock, 51, abruptly resigned his $125,900-a-year post as the Energy Department's deputy director of intelligence amid growing controversy about his role in the espionage probe--and whether China had actually stolen secrets from Los Alamos.

"He was the golden boy for a while," said Robert S. Norris, a nuclear weapons expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "But now it looks like he's a little bit tarnished. We're no closer to actually knowing whether espionage was committed at all."

To his supporters, Trulock remains a courageous whistleblower who doggedly pursued evidence of Chinese espionage and remains almost single-handedly responsible for triggering the first real security and counterintelligence reforms at the weapons labs in 20 years. Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.), whose House select committee on Chinese espionage was highly influenced by Trulock's secret testimony about China's theft of warhead design information, last week lauded his "valuable contributions."

But Trulock's detractors tell a far different story, describing him as a dangerous demagogue who built an espionage case at Los Alamos without solid evidence and singled out physicist Wen Ho Lee as the prime suspect largely because he is Chinese American.

"He's the great impostor, the great impostor," said one senior Energy Department official who clashed early on with Trulock. "He got a job and he pulled it off for three or four years--and it's finally caught up with him. He got what he wanted--his moment on the stage. He was the star of the show. That's what he lived for."

Trulock denied seeking the limelight. "I was thrust into it, kicking and screaming," he said in an interview after his resignation.

He also flatly denied singling out Wen Ho Lee as a suspect because he is Chinese American, as three officials involved in the investigation have charged in recent weeks. Trulock's supporters say that because the Chinese intelligence service targets overseas ethnic Chinese for espionage, taking Lee's ethnic background into consideration was legitimate.

The case began, Trulock said, when he and his staff wrote a 38-page report in spring 1996 on their "administrative inquiry" naming 12 possible suspects at several weapons facilities, three of whom were Chinese Americans. Trulock said he always assumed the FBI would use the document to investigate all 12.

"It was the FBI, pure and simple, who fingered Wen Ho Lee," he said. "I'm not about to say Wen Ho Lee did it. I never did say that."

Asked what he now believes to have been the extent of China's nuclear spying, Trulock made no comparison to the Rosenbergs, pointing instead to an analysis produced in April by the CIA and other members of the U.S. intelligence community as the best assessment of all. Its conclusion:

"China obtained by espionage classified U.S. nuclear weapons information that probably accelerated its program to develop future nuclear weapons. . . . We cannot determine the full extent of weapon information obtained. . . . We do not know whether any weapon design documentation or blueprints were acquired."

Trulock grew up the son of an Indianapolis fireman, graduated from Indiana University in 1970 and went off to work at the super-secret National Security Agency as an Army enlisted man.

With the Russian language training he received at Fort Meade, he became an analyst of Soviet military doctrine, worked at several Washington area defense contractors and landed an analyst's job at Los Alamos in 1990.

In 1993, after receiving awards from Los Alamos and the intelligence community, he transferred to Energy Department headquarters. In a year, he became director of the department's Office of Intelligence, even though he had no management experience and no counterintelligence training.

He soon became obsessed with Chinese espionage after the CIA obtained a document in 1995 indicating that China somehow had obtained classified information about the design of the newest U.S. W-88 warhead.

Determined to catch a spy and plug the security leaks, Trulock fought bruising bureaucratic battles--and ultimately won the day. A presidential decision directive issued by President Clinton in February 1998 mandated nearly all of Trulock's desired reforms.

But Trulock's posture changed at some point last year, around the time he appeared as a secret witness before Cox's panel. Trulock the inside intelligence analyst and reformer had become Trulock the whistleblower.

The transformation was complete by early spring, as he testified on Capitol Hill and graced the Sunday morning talk shows. One official who remembers him from Los Alamos as an extremely sharp Russian military analyst could hardly believe the transformation.

"He has become a political football," the official said.

As the spy scandal broke, Trulock emerged as the hero. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson immediately responded to Republican allegations of foot-dragging by firing Lee in March for security violations, identifying the nuclear physicist as the government's prime espionage suspect. Despite criticism inside the department of Trulock's methods, Richardson gave him a $10,000 bonus.

But events started to turn in June when a panel of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, chaired by former senator Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.), issued a report questioning the extent of any loss to espionage and criticizing Trulock and FBI agents for focusing on Lee in the absence of any hard evidence that he was the source of nuclear secrets somehow obtained by the Chinese. The report recommended that Trulock's office be disbanded and that its responsibilities be given to the CIA.

Lee has denied passing secrets to China and has not been charged with any crime.

Trulock's ego and slashing style were never more evident, his critics say, than in a letter of protest he fired off to Rudman, writing that he was "dismayed" and "deeply offended by your characterization of our efforts to uncover the depth and magnitude of this scandal."

Rudman fired back: "Your tone is both inflammatory and defensive. Even more disappointing are your wildly inaccurate assertions and reckless accusations. Altogether, your letter is wholly unbecoming of a responsible federal official addressing the work of an independent panel of the Executive Office of the President."

The most dramatic turnabout, however, occurred just two weeks ago when Robert S. Vrooman, Los Alamos's former counterintelligence chief, accused Trulock and FBI agents of singling out Lee largely because he was Chinese American. The case, Vrooman said, was "built on thin air." Two other officials soon came forward with similar accounts.

Trulock says Vrooman was merely trying to deflect blame from himself, following a recommendation by Richardson that Vrooman and two other lab officials be disciplined for mishandling the Lee investigation.

"Vrooman didn't do his job," Trulock said.

But he agreed that it was unfair for the department's inspector general to blame three lab employees in a recent report for mishandling the Lee case without holding any higher-ups in the Clinton administration accountable for security failures throughout the nation's nuclear weapons complex.

Indeed, Trulock said he decided to resign and take a program manager's job at TRW Inc., a major defense and intelligence contractor, after the IG's "whitewash," which also concluded that there was insufficient evidence to substantiate Trulock's charge that Elizabeth A. Moler, a former deputy secretary of energy, tried to block him from testifying before Congress last year.

When he read that, Trulock recalled, "I said these people are not serious--and I'm not wasting my time here anymore."

By last week, Trulock, who was considered a non-ideologue during his days at Los Alamos, declared himself a regular visitor to a chat room of FreeRepublic.com, one of the most conservative Web sites. "I have been lurking here for months," he messaged a group that was bitterly commenting on The Washington Post's treatment of his resignation. "During some of the most trying times, FR has been a source of moral support."

Shortly before leaving, Trulock sat down in his office at Energy Department headquarters and typed out a long "goodbye" e-mail to his staff. It was vintage Trulock, sad in tone but prideful and ever defiant.

"Your hard work put this office on the intelligence map," Trulock wrote. "The proof of your work can be seen in the various perverse recommendations to disband the office."

He evinced nothing but scorn for his bosses inside the department, who want to go on "pandering to the labs and the political appointees." But he counseled those he was leaving behind: "Don't be discouraged. This too shall pass."

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Bush Carries Some Baggage in Developing China Stance

By JANE PERLEZ, August 29, 1999 New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/082999china-bush.html

WASHINGTON -- The Republican presidential front-runner, George W. Bush, whose father was accused by candidate Bill Clinton of "coddling" dictators in Beijing, is struggling to decide how hard a line to take toward China.

The issue of China is a sticky one for the Republican candidate, who is caught between hawkish conservatives on one side of his party and pro-business interests on the other. The shadow of his father, who during his presidency claimed China as a special area of expertise, compounds the problem.

While Clinton accused President Bush of being soft on China in the 1992 presidential race, on Saturday it is the Clinton Administration that is under attack for its policy of "strategic partnership," which critics consider too accommodating, particularly after recent charges of nuclear espionage by Beijing.

In the current squabble that erupted between China and Taiwan after Taiwan's leader asserted greater independence, Bush's advisers accused the Clinton Administration of a "tilt toward China," all but assuring that the issue would be locked into the current campaign.

But exactly how hard to hit the issue is a matter of some debate within Bush's circle of advisers, his aides say. Asked on television recently whether American troops might be required if China attacked Taiwan, Bush said: "It could. We need to honor our commitments in the Far East."

The answer was not tough enough to satisfy Republicans who believe that the Clinton Administration is too soft on Beijing and who argue that the Administration should make unequivocal declarations to the Chinese that the United States will respond if Beijing attacks Taiwan.

The Weekly Standard, a conservative political magazine edited by William Kristol, has made this stand clear in several recent editorials. "The best way to avert a crisis now is for the United States to make absolutely clear that it will respond to any military action by Beijing aimed at intimidating Taiwan," said an editorial signed by Kristol and Robert Kagan, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

This week, Bush issued a stronger statement on China. It appeared to stop short of The Standard's position but went beyond his television reply. It was critical for Beijing to understand that if it attacked Taiwan, "the United States will act in accordance with the Taiwan Relations Act and join with Taiwan in insuring Taiwan's defense." The Taiwan Act is not an alliance between the United States and Taiwan and does not explicitly call on the United States to defend Taiwan.

Bush's foreign policy team is headed by Condoleezza Rice, who was a member of President Bush's National Security Council and is an expert on Russia. On Asia, Bush has listened to Paul Wolfowitz, a former Ambassador to Indonesia, and Richard L. Armitage, who was a senior official in the Pentagon during the Bush presidency.

Wolfowitz, Armitage and a third adviser, Richard Perle, were among 22 signators to a strong policy statement on Taiwan put out by two conservative research institutes, The Heritage Foundation and The Project for the New American Century. The statement said unequivocally that the United States should declare it would come to Taiwan's defense in the event of an attack or a blockade against Taiwan, including the islands of Matsu and Kinmen.

Bush's position on China was based on some basic precepts, Ms. Rice said. "China is not an enemy and not a partner," she said. There were some areas where cooperation was desirable -- such as China's membership in the World Trade Organization. There were other areas, such as strategic interests in Asia, where China was a competitor of the United States, she said.

For his part, Armitage, who has been to the campaign headquarters in Austin, Tex., several times to consult, said that Bush viewed China in the context of the United States major alliance in Asia, Japan, a country the candidate knew "a lot about."

Even though he had signed a statement calling for the United States to come to Taiwan's defense in event of an attack, Armitage suggested it was unfair to expect a presidential candidate to give a definitive answer.

"On the question of the use of force, anyone sitting in the presidency is going to have to make the decision at the time," he said. "It's very bad business to answer hypothetical questions on force when you may be there to do it.'

On the relationship between China and Taiwan, which is currently embraced by the Clinton Administration in the "one China policy" to which every administration has adhered since 1979, Armitage said it is essential that any change in that policy should be with the full accord of the Taiwanese.

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The Pentagon Is Faulted on Security

By THE NEW YORK TIMES, August 29, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/082999pentagon-security.html

WASHINGTON -- After years of warnings and efforts to correct the problem, the Defense Department's computer systems remain disturbingly open to infiltration, according to a review by the General Accounting Office.

"Serious weaknesses in Department of Defense information security continue to provide both hackers and hundreds of thousands of authorized users the opportunity to modify, steal, inappropriately disclose, and destroy sensitive D.O.D. data," said the report by the accounting office, the investigative arm of Congress.

"As a result," said the report, which was released on Thursday, "numerous Defense functions, including weapons and super-computer research, logistics, finance, procurement, personnel management, military health, and payroll, have already been adversely affected by system attacks or fraud."

Concerns about the security of Federal computer systems were heightened this spring, when hackers broke into the Web sites of the White House, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Senate, posting inappropriate photos and text and leading the Government to shut down the sites temporarily.

The Defense Department has persistent problems with computer security, said the accounting office.

The Defense Department's Information Systems Agency, which operates data-processing systems around the country, is the only unit that has begun a comprehensive security review. In January 1998, the Pentagon announced that it intended to consolidate its security efforts department-wide. But the program has still not been fully developed.

Despite those efforts, the General Accounting Office found a number of security flaws. For example, management of passwords on Defense computer systems had improved, but users were not required to change their passwords often enough, if at all. Computer users often had easily guessed passwords. And a single password was sometimes used by a group of people.

Susan Hansen, a spokeswoman for the Department of Defense, said the Pentagon was "working to shore up computer security as fast as time and resources will allow."

The department has 2.1 million computers, with more than 10,000 networks linking computers both in the Pentagon and around the world.

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Admiral says submarines needed more than ever

By Gregg K. Kakesako Honolulu Star-Bulletin, August 27, 1999
http://starbulletin.com/1999/08/27/news/story7.html

The Cold War may be over, but the need for submarines that provide stealth and Tomahawk-missile strike capabilities continues to increase, said the head of the Pacific Fleet's sub force.

Rear Adm. Albert H. Konetzni Jr., commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet's Submarine Force, said treaties are meaningless without credible means of enforcement.

Speaking at the inactivation of the USS Hawkbill today, Konetzni said that 71 years ago 15 nations signed the Kellog-Briand Pact, also known as the Pact of Paris.

It was ratified eventually by 62 nations and was supposed to have "outlawed war" -- all conflicts were supposed to be settled by peaceful means, Konetzni added.

But because its effectiveness was negated by its failure to provide means of enforcement, the pact failed to prevent aggression by the Japanese in Manchuria in 1931, by Italy in Ethiopia in 1935 and by Germany in Poland in 1939, which triggered World War II.

"Without credible means of enforcement," said the admiral who commands the Pacific Fleet's 20 nuclear submarines, "without teeth, the policy and interests of even the most noble of causes, simply won't last."

He added, "If you're going to be the toughest guy on the block, you need to be the toughest guy on the block."

Today's nuclear fleet of attack submarines numbers at 58, but it's programmed to drop to 50 while some experts believe at least 72 are needed.

In addition to attack submarines, the Navy maintains 18 Trident class "boomers," each loaded with 24 intercontinental, nuclear-tipped missiles. The Tridents are programmed to drop from 18 to 14 by 2003

Konetzni said at the tip of the country's military presence for the past 30 years has been the USS Hawkbill, the last of the Pacific Fleet's Sturgeon class subs.

In the ship's last year of service the Hawkbill this summer conducted the fifth of five joint ventures between the Navy and the National Science Foundation to chart the Arctic.

The 33,962-mile around-the-world mission will be the subject of a one-hour CNN documentary at 3 p.m. Sunday.

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[Lots of links to previous articles, photos of demonstrators]

THE FALLOUT FROM CASSINI
Controversy over the spacecraft's plutonium may threaten future missions to explore the solar system

Scientific American, September 1999
http://www.sciam.com/1999/0999issue/0999infocus.html

At 3:28 A.M. Greenwich Mean Time on August 18, the two-story-tall Cassini spacecraft was expected to swoop past Earth, hurtling about 1,170 kilometers (725 miles) over the South Pacific at a blistering speed of 68,000 kilometers per hour (42,000 miles per hour). The flyby maneuver would use Earth's gravity like a slingshot, accelerating the spacecraft to its 2004 rendezvous with Saturn, where it will explore the planet's rings and its 18 known moons.

In the weeks before the flyby, however, critics of the Cassini mission warned of the potential for a nightmarish accident. The spacecraft contains three radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), which produce electricity from the heat emitted by the radioactive decay of plutonium 238 dioxide. RTGs have provided power for about two dozen spacecraft, including the Voyager and Galileo probes; the devices are particularly useful in the outer reaches of the solar system, where sunlight is too weak to generate much electricity. Critics have focused on Cassini because it holds a record amount of plutonium fuel: about 33 kilograms (72 pounds). More than 1,000 people demonstrated against the mission in Cape Canaveral, Fla., before the spacecraft's successful launch from there in October 1997. In June of this year anti-Cassini groups organized smaller demonstrations against the Earth flyby.

The protesters claimed that if the spacecraft hit Earth instead of swinging by it, much of the craft's plutonium fuel would be pulverized into fine particles that would spread throughout the atmosphere. The fuel pellets are enclosed in iridium capsules and two layers of graphite shielding, but the modules were not designed to withstand an ultrahigh-speed reentry. The harm that would be done by such a release is virtually impossible to predict--estimates vary from 120 fatal cancers worldwide to hundreds of thousands of deaths. Although far more plutonium has been released into the atmosphere by nuclear bomb tests, plutonium 238 is about 280 times more radioactive than plutonium 239, the material in bomb fallout. According to John Gofman, professor emeritus of molecular and cell biology at the University of California at Berkeley, a single micron-size particle of plutonium 238, if inhaled, could cause lung cancer. "It's pretty hot stuff," Gofman says.

Fortunately, the chances of an impact on August 18 were calculated to be minuscule: less than one in a million, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Because Cassini is so heavy (more than 5,000 kilograms), it would take a mighty push--an explosive leak, for example, or a collision with a large meteor--to alter the spacecraft's trajectory significantly. As an extra precaution, the mission team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., biased Cassini's trajectory so that it would miss Earth by at least 5,000 kilometers if the ground controllers lost contact with the craft.

Even some of Cassini's opponents acknowledged that the flyby would probably be uneventful. Only 60 people showed up at the Cape Canaveral protest in June. "People are still concerned, but it's really out of our hands," explains Bruce Gagnon, who organized the demonstration. Michio Kaku, a physicist at the City University of New York who has been the most prominent Cassini critic in the scientific community, says NASA should not draw the wrong lesson from the anticipated success of the flyby. "Sooner or later," Kaku maintains, "the odds will catch up with us."

Over the next 10 years NASA is planning three more missions that are expected to use plutonium fuel for electric power: Europa Orbiter, which will travel to Jupiter's fourth-largest satellite; Pluto-Kuiper Express, which will whiz past the farthest planet; and Solar Probe, which will go into an elongated orbit to study the sun. John McNamee, project manager for the missions at JPL, says that all three spacecraft will journey too far from the sun to rely on solar power. The probes would have to carry oversize solar panels to generate enough electricity for their needs. Besides adding weight to the craft, the large panels would be difficult to deploy and control. "Solar power just isn't technically feasible for these missions," McNamee remarks.

Unlike Cassini, the three planned missions will not fly by Earth, but McNamee says this is not because of any concerns that the probes might hit our planet. The future spacecraft will be several times lighter than Cassini, so they will not need as many gravity-assist flybys to reach their destinations. For the same reason, the probes will not need giant rockets to blast them into space. Cassini was launched by a powerful Titan 4 booster--the reliability of which has been questioned after some recent spectacular failures. The future missions will most likely be launched by the space shuttle or by updated Delta or Atlas rockets, McNamee says.

This prospect frightens Kaku. With a spacecraft carrying plutonium, the launch is by far the most dangerous moment. "If Cassini had blown up at launch, it would've been the end of the space program," he says. "We're putting a lot of hope on a firecracker." According to NASA, however, even a catastrophic launch accident would not release any plutonium fuel. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which builds the RTGs, has subjected them to extensive tests that simulated the conditions of a rocket explosion. The testers fired .30- and .50-caliber bullets at RTG components to determine if they could be pierced by shrapnel. They also slammed rocket sleds against the devices, exposed them to propellant fires and detonated explosives to mimic blast waves.

Most of the tests did not damage the plutonium-fuel capsules, but some of the more severe impacts created fissures that would have released small amounts of fuel. NASA officials assert that such intense impacts would be unlikely during a launch accident. Kaku, though, looked at the same test results and came to the opposite conclusion. "The worst case," he says, "is if it explodes high in the atmosphere and the winds blow the plutonium around. Whole areas of Florida would have to be quarantined. And you could kiss Disney World good-bye." Aerospace engineers dispute this claim: Jerry Grey, a mechanical and aerospace engineer at Princeton University, says RTGs proved their survivability in 1968, when a military satellite carrying two generators was destroyed in a launch explosion in California. The RTGs landed in the Santa Barbara Channel and were retrieved intact from the seabed. "Nothing has a zero hazard," Grey notes. "But the hazard from RTGs is so small it should not bar their use."

In the debate over RTGs, however, perceptions are sometimes more important than facts. NASA officials admit that the Cassini controversy may threaten the chances of any future space mission that would carry radioisotopes. "I think it may be a problem," concedes Robert Mitchell, Cassini's program manager. "The amount of effort needed to get missions like this approved will increase."

Meanwhile the DOE is developing a more efficient generator for spacecraft called the Advanced Radioisotope Power System (ARPS). If successful, ARPS would require 50 percent less plutonium fuel than a comparable RTG does. ARPS would also be about 25 percent lighter, no small consideration for a spacecraft component. NASA is paying the DOE $75 million to develop the generators, and JPL's McNamee says flight units could be ready for the planned 2003 launch of Europa Orbiter. The spacecraft would then need to carry as little as five kilograms of plutonium fuel.

But this effort has not satisfied the Cassini protesters. "It doesn't matter to us, because it takes so little plutonium to create havoc," Gagnon argues. Kaku would prefer that NASA spend its money developing better solar power technologies for its spacecraft. "NASA is saying that solar is difficult and nuclear is easier," he states. "I'm saying that solar is difficult but not impossible." Kaku acknowledged that solar power is currently not a viable option for a probe to Pluto, but technical advances may eventually make such a mission possible. "The technology is not there yet," Kaku says. "But that's okay. Pluto is not going to go away."

--Mark Alpert

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Republican Lawmaker Hints At Reno Cover-Up On Waco

Updated 2:58 AM ET August 30, 1999, By Jim Wolf
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990830/02/news-crime-davidians

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A powerful Republican lawmaker said Sunday that he would not be surprised if Attorney General Janet Reno had been involved in a cover-up of the deadly fire that ended an FBI standoff with a religious cult in 1993.

"It would not surprise me if Janet Reno tried to keep a lid on this, because I think she's done that in other areas," Dan Burton, chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform, said in a television interview.

Burton, a fierce critic of Reno's handling of probes into Democratic Party fund-raising abuses, said he planned to subpoena Justice and Defense Department officials this week to examine major new questions about the official version of the April 19, 1993, showdown with the Branch Davidian sect.

Last week, Reno, the nation's top law-enforcement officer, and top aides backed off six years of firm denials that federal agents had used incendiary devices on the day the Davidians' compound in Waco, Texas, burned to the ground.

Cult leader David Koresh and more than 80 followers were killed in the fire, which conspiracy theorists have maintained was deliberately set by the authorities.

Until last week, Reno and the FBI, which she controls, had denied repeatedly that tear-gas canisters used that day contained pyrotechnic devices.

A Justice Department spokesman dismissed as "ridiculous" Burton's suggestion that Reno might be involved in a cover-up.

"She was assured no such devices would be used or were used that day -- and that's why she's so angry now," Myron Marlin, Reno's spokesman, said.

Thursday, Reno said she was "very, very troubled" by the belated disclosure that the FBI may have used incendiary military tear-gas rounds early that day. But she and the FBI said they continued to believe law-enforcement officers did not cause the fire.

"Apparently, the canisters in question were used in an attempt to penetrate the roof of an underground bunker away from the main Branch Davidian compound," FBI spokesman David Miller told Reuters. Citing electronic surveillance tapes, the bureau says the Davidians themselves started the fire.

Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh ordered a sweeping new investigation after the Dallas Morning News found evidence of the use of incendiary devices as a result of a lawsuit in Texas. Reno has not yet specified whether the review will be carried out internally or by an outsider.

Burton, of Indiana, said on the NBC program "Meet the Press" he did not trust Reno. He said he planned to launch congressional oversight hearings "as soon as possible."

He alleged that the Justice Department had asked the Texas Rangers, the state law enforcement authority, to keep information about the event "under lock and key for the past six years."

"For them to say that they didn't know pyrotechnic devices were used just stretches credulity," he said. "I think the attorney general should be held accountable for not telling the American people about this for the past six years. Because if they didn't know about it, they should have."

"So when you ask me, do I trust her, I certainly do not. And that's why my committee is going to do a very thorough investigation of this whole matter," he said.

Burton left open the possibility that Reno and the FBI might still be hiding a link between the pyrotechnic rounds and the deadly fire at Waco.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch of Utah, a Republican presidential hopeful, played down the significance of the related disclosure that elite Army Delta Force units were present during the siege. Any operational involvement could be a violation of the Posse Comitatas Act, which bars the use of the military for domestic law enforcement in the absence of a presidential waiver.

"I have no problem with them there as observers," Hatch said on Fox News Sunday. "If they were there to lead an assault on the compound, that's another matter."

Retired FBI Supervisory Agent Byron Sage, who led negotiations with Koresh at Waco, said on Fox he understood three or four "military tactical observers" had been present at Waco, strictly as "observers and advisers."

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Reno Facing GOP Criticism Over Waco

By The Associated Press, August 30, 1999
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990830/V000685-083099-idx.html
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-FBI-Waco.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Attorney General Janet Reno's Republican critics in Congress say new revelations about the 1993 Branch Davidian standoff bolster their arguments that Reno and her Justice Department have not been forthright with the American people.

Her Democratic defenders warned against politicizing the matter of whether -- contrary to past claims -- the FBI used incendiary tear gas grenades in the final hours before the Davidians' compound near Waco, Texas, went up in flames.

``Pointing fingers or demonizing the attorney general of the United States who has come forward this week serves us no purpose,'' Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, said Sunday on CNN's ``Late Edition.''

Reno said Thursday she was ``very, very troubled'' by newly received information that pyrotechnic devices may have been used on the last day of the 51-day siege, in which more than 80 people died. She said she and FBI Director Louis Freeh had ordered a full review of the case.

Reno and other Justice Department and FBI officials have stressed that the several military-type incendiary grenades were fired at an underground bunker away from the main wooden building but had nothing to do with the fire that broke out hours later and destroyed the compound.

They said there was solid evidence that Branch Davidian leader David Koresh and his followers set the fires that killed more than 80 people.

On Sunday, Justice Department spokesman Myron Marlin reiterated Reno's own anger at the new revelations. ``She had asked for and received assurances that these devices would not be used and were not used,'' he said. ``It is extremely frustrating, and that's why she plans to get to the bottom of this.''

Byron Sage, a retired FBI agent and chief Waco hostage negotiator, said on NBC's ``Meet the Press'' that while it was ``very troubling'' that information on the incendiary grenades is only surfacing now, ``this was not a coverup, this was not any grand conspiracy or anything else. What it was was a very glaring oversight.''

But Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, said he didn't trust Reno and ``that's why my committee is going to do a very thorough investigation of this whole matter.''

Burton said he would issue subpoenas this week to the Justice and Defense departments. ``I intend to have depositions taken from all those people and put them under oath,'' he told NBC.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said he also planned investigations into Waco. The GOP presidential hopeful said on ``Fox News Sunday'' that Reno has generally been stingy in imparting information to Congress, and he complained of a ``lack of cooperation from the leadership of the Justice Department. ... I don't think they have much credibility at this particular point.''

Burton and Hatch have clashed frequently with Reno over what the Republicans call the lack of Justice Department cooperation in congressional investigations into White House scandals, Democratic fund raising and alleged Chinese espionage.

``It would not surprise me if Janet Reno tried to keep a lid on this because I think she has done that in other areas,'' Burton said.

But Reno was defended by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who told NBC that he had ``real faith in her integrity.'' But Schumer also said she should seek an independent, outside investigation rather than have the FBI or Justice Department look into the incendiary device matter.

``The FBI had its chance to do this investigation on its own. They clearly muffed it,'' Schumer said.

Sage and former agent Bob Ricks, the FBI spokesman during the Waco crisis, also played down disclosures that officers from the Army's secretive Delta Force anti-terror unit were on the scene at Waco.

Ricks, on ABC's ``This Week,'' said the FBI had long coordinated with the Army on hostage and rescue missions, and the Delta officers were there only as occasional observers and advisers. ``They very much were properly there,'' he maintained.

However, Michael Caddell, a lawyer for families of Branch Davidian members, told ABC that a military presence at a civilian police operation violates the law.

[See the thought-provoking book, "Votescam: the Stealing of America" by Jim and Ken Collier, ISBN: 0963416308, Victoria House Press, February 1994 - http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=639L8NDQHR&mscssid=Q75EFC7LBWS12JX30017QRP4NDNB9VB6&sourceid=00000172880246116640&bfdate=08%2D30%2D1999+06%3A55%3A55&pcount=0&srefer=&isbn=0963416308. Janet Reno never answered some rather compelling questions.]